Mike O’Connor: PM more worried about what the world thinks of us instead of fixing our problems

Anthony Albanese reckons a failure to pass the Voice referendum would be a lost opportunity to showcase our arrival on the world stage as “a mature nation”, writes Mike O’Connor.

If the Prime Minister is feeling a little out of sorts this morning, it could be that he is suffering from a dose of allodoxaphobia.

This is a diagnosable psychological anxiety condition caused by a need to seek the approval of others which if untreated can lead to a paralysis of the decision-making process.

The first symptoms were revealed recently when Anthony Albanese warned that a failure to pass the Voice referendum would send “a bad message” as to the way Australia was perceived internationally and was a chance to show the world that we are a “mature nation”.

There was a time when we suffered from another condition called cultural cringe.

People infected with this were ashamed to be Australians and ran off to Britain or Europe as quickly as they could where, desperate to earn the approval of what they regarded as the intellectual elite, they made a career out of ridiculing their homeland.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese with Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney and Assistant Minister for Indigenous Australians and Assistant Minister for Indigenous Health Malarndirri McCarthy. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Gary Ramage

You would have thought we had moved on just a little from the cringe but the PM’s apparent craving of international approval of our domestic policies would indicate that the virus lingers.

I wonder if the US or Britain or France or any other nation on the planet were to consider a radical change to its constitution, they would first worry about what other countries might think?

Down here in Oz, however, we are told that if we don’t behave and vote in favour of the referendum, other nations might think of us as “bad”.

It was not made clear just which countries would regard a rejection of the referendum as “bad”.

China, perhaps, with its enviable record of human rights or Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq or Myanmar. Russia maybe or anywhere in Africa?

As well as risking the opprobrium of the world, a failure to pass the referendum would, according to Mr Albanese, be a lost opportunity to showcase our arrival on the world stage as “a mature nation”.

The Aboriginal and Australian flags fly on top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Jeremy Piper

At the moment, apparently, we are just a bunch of immature rednecks who don’t know what’s good for us.

I would suggest that it’s a long time since Australians felt the need to tug their forelocks and genuflect in the general direction of Europe or anywhere else yet at the moment, according to the PM, we are yet to mature as nation.

All we have to do to be elevated to this hallowed status is to do as we are told and vote “yes” for the Voice.

Mr Albanese promised that his election heralded a new approach to politics.

There is little sign of this unless you regard clumsy attempts at emotional blackmail and trying to make us feel in some way lacking in intellectual maturity if we don’t toe the PM’s line as positives.

Young Indigenous Australians on the street in Alice Springs this month. The town was once an international tourism hub, but 300 people have been arrested in the past seven weeks out of a population of 25,000. Picture: Liam Mendes/The Australian

What a travesty it would be if a decision to make a fundamental change to the Constitution was to be made on the basis of what the rest of the world might think.

That, I think, would demonstrate national immaturity on a grand scale.

If I were the PM, I’d be more worried about what the rest of the world thinks when it reads that in Alice Springs, once an international tourism hub, 300 people have been arrested in the past seven weeks out of a population of 25,000 and that the once bustling CBD is now a no-go zone terrorised by drunken youths armed with machetes.

I’d be worried about what they might think when they hear that 90,000 Australian youths are illiterate and lack basic numeracy skills and that failure rates in reading and numeracy among students from year 3 to 9 continue to increase.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese should sing Advance Australia Fair on January 26, thanking God for the countless blessings we enjoy in this country and urging his fellow Australians to do the same. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Jeremy Piper

If the PM is so concerned about what the world thinks, he might care to address these and any number of other issues plaguing our regional centres and remote communities rather than lecturing us on the need to appear to be mature to the world.

The Australian people will decide how they will vote on the Voice when the PM finds the political maturity required to tell them in some detail for what it is they are voting.

Allodoxaphobia can be debilitating, but I believe one successful treatment would involve Mr Albanese singing Advance Australia Fair on January 26, thanking God for the countless blessings we enjoy in this country and urging his fellow Australians to do the same.

Originally published as Mike O’Connor: PM more worried about what the world thinks of us instead of fixing our problems